Click here to copy URL

Amadeus

Oscar™ Best Picture - Winning Movies

Amadeus

1984

Milos Forman

Tom Hulce, F. Murray Abraham, Elizabeth Berridge, Simon Callow ...

7.7

77,423

Drama In a lavish 18th Century parlor in Austria, an elderly man is found, by his servant, with his throat slashed. The wound is self-inflicted, and the man is the little-known composer Salieri (F. Murray Abraham), contemporary and adversary of the now-famed, but once reviled, composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (Tom Hulce). Later, from his cell in an insane asylum, Salieri tells a priest (Herman Meckler) the story of his association with ... [+]

	Author	Review
United States	Vincent Canby The New York Times	"This 'Amadeus' is fascinating and it may be even more humane than the play, and though the impact is not necessarily less, it is decidedly different."	POS
United States	Todd McCarthy Variety	"Loaded with pleasures, the greatest of which derive from the on location filming in Prague, the most 18th century of all European cities."	POS
United States	Roger Ebert rogerebert.com	"One of the riskiest gambles a filmmaker has taken in a long time -- a lavish movie about Mozart that dares to be anarchic and saucy (...) Rating: ★★★★ (out of 4)"	POS
United States	Tasha Robinson AV Club	"Visually stunning, the cast is spectacular, and Forman deftly shapes and informs the narrative with exquisite use of music."	POS
United Kingdom	Ian Nathan Empire	"'Amadeus' skewers the period finery - stunning costumes, production design, sublime music - with piercing intelligence and thematic gravitas."	POS
United Kingdom	David Shariatmadari The Guardian	"'Amadeus' weaves a beautiful, tragic fable, enchanting to children and adults alike."	POS
United Kingdom	Neil Smith BBC	"[Abraham] brings a magnetic intensity to the role of Antonio Salieri (...) [A] cinematic marvel"	POS
United Kingdom	David Parkinson Radio Times	"One of the finest biographical dramas ever made (...) The music is majestic (…) Rating: ★★★★★ (out of 5)"	POS
United Kingdom	Trevor Johnston Time Out	"Sheer craftsmanship is the film's key strength (...) The overall effect is hugely impressive, yet the film somehow fails to excite any rush of emotion."	NEU
United States	Gene Siskel Chicago Tribune	"[It] treats the subject of creativity in a fresh way (…) Rating: ★★★½ (out of 4)"	POS
United States	Joshua Rothkopf Chicago Reader	"The bawdy rock-star conception of Mozart for this 1984 film still feels like a stunt (...) Milos Forman plays Salieri's bitterness for laughs, not without success"	NEU

Return to movie

We encourage you to check the reviews' original sources. Intellectual property rights of these reviews belong to their authors and/or the correspondent media from which they have been extracted. If you'd like to help us to add more reviews to your favorite movies, just send us a message.